The Marker Read Online Free Page A

hard line, an expression mirroring his daughter’s. “I can think of no other way. You’d be cast out of the house if I went to work for him, and where would you be then?”
    The relief surging through Nicholas at Markland’s words thoroughly disconcerted him.
    Gesturing to the empty kitchen, she cried, “I’ve already been cast out! You sold me like you’ve sold all our things! I’ve already agreed to so much, Father! I’ve got so little for you to take, and yet you somehow manage to do it, selling me because you can’t stop gambling, because you haven’t figured out that when you gamble, you don’t win!”
    The chair crashed to the floor as Markland stood up abruptly and raised his hand to her, ready to strike. Lexie scrambled behind the table, putting herself out of his reach. “You don’t get to talk to me like that!” he bellowed, lurching toward her. But before Markland had a chance to follow through with his threat, Nicholas stepped between the two of them, shielding her with his body.
    “If you need to hit someone, hit me,” he said calmly, though he wanted nothing more than to get into a scrape with Markland. Nicholas had thought the man vile before, but he would not allow the man to lay a hand on his daughter ever again. If anyone were going to lay a hand on her, it would be him, though certainly not in anger. He could think of a multitude of things he would like to do to her with his hands, but hitting her was not one of them. And from her immediate reaction, he knew she was accustomed to Markland’s rage—this was not the first time she’d had to dodge a blow from her father. That Markland would attempt to do such a thing in front of Nicholas made him wonder what he was capable of when he didn’t have company.
    Nicholas wanted to tear his throat out.
    Hell, if he took her with him, he would actually be rescuing her.
    Nice try, his honor hissed in response.
     
    Lexie’s gaze slid between the two men. At least twenty years younger, a good six inches taller and far stronger than her father, Nicholas would kill him if they came to blows. She touched Nicholas’s shoulder and the furious expression on his face startled her.
    “It’s all right,” she said, her voice flat. Glaring at her father, she squared her shoulders. She was practical enough to know she couldn’t escape this. After all, her father wouldn’t trade places with her, and they had nothing left to barter. She had seen the sum of money her father had gambled and lost. They didn’t have that kind of money, unless they sold the house, and doing so didn’t improve her situation—but it would leave her homeless.
    And now she knew precisely how much she was worth.
    But one last attempt. “And there’s no way to get the money to pay the debt?” she asked her father, raising her brows meaningfully.
    “Not unless you want to change the arrangement, but you made it quite clear you didn’t the last time I asked,” her father said with a sigh. He stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. Lexie flinched away, unwilling to abide his touch, and Nicholas bristled beside her, as though ready to intervene. She didn’t know what to make of him.
    “It’s only a year, Lexie,” Markland continued with a gentleness that belied his earlier attempt to hit her. So typical of her father: rage one moment and gentleness the next. It wasn’t the poverty or the debt collectors that bothered her the most about her situation, but rather how she could never be sure which version of her father she was going to get. “Think of it as an adventure.”
    “An adventure? You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? You can’t possibly think this ,”—she made an angry gesture at Nicholas with her hands—”will somehow be fun ? You’re not the one who’s being forced to work as a servant. You’re not the one who’s been bought and sold.”
    “I don’t expect you to understand, Lexie,” Markland said. “I know what I did was wrong, and I